Photography Tutorial · 2023-03-19

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest!

This year's DJI SkyPixel Photography Contest recently announced its results.

As the most renowned aerial photography contest, its winning works can teach us a lot - for example: is a higher drone position always better?

In today's video, Thomas will join everyone in appreciating this year's winning works.

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 1

Video

▶ Watch the video tutorial on Bilibili

This is the illustrated companion to the video above. The 2023 SkyPixel drone contest has announced its winners, and Thomas reviews the grand prize and top-ten images one by one while answering a question many drone pilots ask: is higher always better? This year's grand prize argues the opposite — a low-altitude image of a water-lily harvest by a Vietnamese photographer. It all unfolds below in video order.

Start with the grand prize: a Vietnamese photographer's scene of flower farmers harvesting water lilies. Soft, calm and beautiful, the image is nearly impeccable on pure picture quality (at 0:21 in the video).

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 2

01 The Grand Prize: The Water-Lily Harvest

The frame rewards close reading: the spread lilies run along a diagonal, fanning out like a flower in bloom, with a farmer on each side so the labor and the floral shape answer each other. Shot under overcast light — or with a polarizer — the surface glare is nearly eliminated, and darkening the water in post makes the petals stand out sharply (at 1:12 in the video).

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 3

The one possible objection is its staged quality — this looks closer to a folk-performance scene. Then again, Vietnamese aerials usually show floating markets or net-casting close-ups, and a water-lily harvest is genuinely rare — fresh enough to justify itself.

02 Higher Is Not Necessarily Better

The most instructive thing about the winner is its choice of altitude. Thomas pulled up the same photographer's other frames of the same scene: all lovely, but flown a touch too high — reaching for the sky's reflection, the boats and the surroundings (at 1:59 in the video). With so many elements the frames turn busy.

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 4

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 5

Put beside the grand prize, the difference is obvious. Drones should not simply fly higher: more altitude means more elements and more clutter; in a calm, clean scene, flying lower and focusing on the most striking corner often wins (at 2:07 in the video). The composition is a textbook too — the diagonal breaks any rigid balance, while the mirrored farmers and the fan of flowers keep the whole image stable.

03 The Top Ten: The Magic of Shadows

The most classic trick among the top ten is photographing shadows: at dawn or dusk, stretched long, shadows become the protagonist. One winner keeps only a prison-bar lattice of stripes with a red figure for accent after darkening and decluttering the edges (at 2:58 in the video); another catches runners crossing pale ground, their elongated shadows full of motion (at 3:25) — a reminder that sports shots need not stare at the athletes themselves.

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 6

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 7

Another winner puts Thomas's favorite pair — repetition and echo — to full use: a maze of repeating structures answers itself until a lone figure with an umbrella breaks the pattern and the calm, all set in the classic contrast of orange against cyan, complementary colors (at 5:00 in the video). Contrast, repetition and echo remain the most dependable tools of composition.

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 8

04 Color and Restraint: Negative Space Highlights

Most people shoot lava backwards: flying as low as possible for eruption close-ups, when highlighting its heat and glow sometimes calls for negative space — the already-darkened surroundings form a natural black backdrop, and the lava's shape even resembles a gecko (at 5:54 in the video). The same goes for autumn color and harvest joy: choose a shooting time that leaves the edges unlit, or darken them in post, so only the colors you want carry the frame and the hierarchy stays clear.

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 9

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 10

Cities and industry are aerial goldmines too: parking lots and building clusters offer geometric lines and bold colors for free (at 5:40 in the video), and Vietnam's conical hats and colorful clothes are naturally photogenic against the clean backdrop of harvest fields. Thomas closes with two takeaways: many winners this year leaned on shadows, and many were not flown high — a low position that spotlights the most charged contrast is often the better strategy, so decide height on site rather than climbing to 500 meters by habit. And as telephoto drones mature, compressed-perspective frames may soon shape future SkyPixel contests.

Is Flying Lower Actually Better for Aerial Photography? Appreciating Award-Winning Works from the Drone Photography Contest! · Fig. 11

1. Higher is not better in aerial work — more altitude brings more clutter, and calm scenes reward flying low to focus on the best corner; 2. Decide height on site instead of climbing to 500 meters out of habit; 3. Long dawn-and-dusk shadows are an aerial accent — for motion, shooting shadows beats shooting the athletes; 4. To make color and light pop, first arrange a dark backdrop and negative space — contrast builds hierarchy, darkening builds emphasis.

HD video:

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1L84y1w7Px/